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The finishing day

Théophile is training the participants in win – win. Making business with both parts winning

I spent the morning printing the part two of the FBS material, in total 269 pages. Luckily, Yapeco has a very good printer that prints both sides, which is combined with a copier. This copy will the the original which Yapeco will use for printing the copies to the course participants. We have finally got hold of a print shop that can print the material to the same price as we got in Sweden. It is nice that the material can be produced here in Congo. Part two of the FBS course will start on May 5 and will hold on for eight or nine days.

Julienne and Bernt did complete the certificates in the morning, adding the names of the participants. We had 42 certificates to hand out later on during the day. Fourteen of the participants had been present all nine days and they got a little star on their certificat, for diligence. The participants paid 1,000 FC = slightly more than 1 U.S. dollars, for the certificate. No one questioned the fee. Moreover, many of they wanted to buy a compendium about entrepreneurship that we have used in previous courses. We asked for 500 FC per copy. This time, there has been a great curiosity about this type of material. We haven’t experienced that before. Another remarkable thing is that we haven’t heard one single comment on that it would be too expensive to participate. On average, there has been 33 participants per day.

For the last time we gathered at three o’clock to finish the course. We had only one lesson left to go through and it was all about selling. The power was gone at first, but came back just in time for Julienne to begin with the Power Point presentation. Théophile, a teacher and accomplished educator at the Baobab school led an exercise in how the win – win approach works. A number of participants had brought with them different commodities such as fruit, flipflops, toys etc. They had put the item in an opaque plastic bag and then they switched bags without knowing what was in the new bag. They were then supposed to evaluate the item in the bag, and they had to report if they felt win – win or win – lose. I wasn’t convinced that the exercise completely clarified the win – win theory, but the participants enjoyed themselves royally. And parts of my doubts can definately be referred to linguistic confusion.

Before they went home, we had group photographs taken. And somewhat delayed, chilled soft drinks arrived. We offered them to the group to honor the day.